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“World Cup, international competition, I don’t know,” Bettman said at a press conference at Rogers Arena. “We may take a look at it. It might be a valuable opportunity.”

None of North America’s four major professional sports leagues currently have ads on jerseys, but the practice is widespread elsewhere in the world.

Bettman said that won’t be happening any time soon in the NHL.

“I’m in no rush to put advertising on our sweaters,” he said. “I think we’ve got the best jerseys in all of sports. I like the history, the tradition. I like the way they look and I’ve repeatedly said we wouldn’t be the first (in North America) and you’d probably have to bring me kicking and screaming.”

The World Cup of Hockey will be held in Toronto prior to the 2016-’17 NHL season and is expected to generate more than US$100 million in profits.

“The World Cup jerseys don’t have the same legacy as far as I’m concerned that our regular jerseys have,” added Bettman, who was in Vancouver to watch the Canucks host the Buffalo Sabres on Friday night. “So (advertising on jerseys) could happen in the World Cup … might not, but it’s not anything we’re focused on doing for the league itself.”

TORONTO — True story: Almost three years ago, the elected members of the federal government passed a bill through the House of Commons that would remove the restriction on single-game sports betting.

It was a private member’s bill, though, and it happened on a Friday when the House was lightly attended, so the passage of legislation that would effectively allow provincial gaming authorities to become bookies did not get a lot of attention.

But, 35 months later, the bill still has not become law. It has been stuck in the Senate, where members who have taken time from the expulsion of colleagues and general worry about the legitimacy of their expense claims have been busy not passing it. There have been complaints relating to the procedural passage of the bill, but in the meantime there has also been strong condemnation of its intent, not least by the National Hockey League.

Bill C-290, the NHL submitted in a three-page brief to the Senate, “jeopardizes the integrity of professional sports and the public’s trust and confidence in professional sports in North America.” And, the league wrote, “the NHL has steadfastly opposed the spread of gambling and/or gambling-related activities tied to the results of NHL games.”

Given recent developments, says Brian Masse, the NDP MP for Windsor West who is the bill’s sponsor, the league really ought to reconsider its opposition.

“It’s hypocrisy,” says Masse, who has sent a letter to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman that indeed uses that word — “absurd levels of hypocrisy,” even — to describe the NHL’s position on the matter.

He notes that the league has recently given its blessing to the prospective owner of a Las Vegas-based franchise to conduct a ticket drive in that city to gauge interest. It is hard to square steadfast opposition to the expansion of gambling tied to the results of NHL games with the potential location of a team in the gambling capital of North America. And, Masse, argues in his letter, the NHL’s recent partnership with the daily-fantasy sports site DraftKings is a tacit endorsement of hockey-related gambling, since that’s exactly what these enterprises offer, though they put some effort into insisting their games are not gambling. (They say they are games of skill, although one must still risk money on a series of sporting events with unpredictable outcomes.)

Even before all that happened, Masse argues, provinces were already allowing wagering on professional sports, but just in complicated parlay systems through their lottery corporations.

“I’ve never understood why it’s OK to bet on three games, but not two or one,” Masse says in an interview.

AP Photo/Wilfredo LeeGary Bettman has in the past proved quite immune to the admonishments of those who tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so one imagines he is unlikely to be quickly swayed by a letter of complaint, even one on House of Commons letterhead.

These points are all well taken, especially the one about Vegas, where the arena for the potential team is being constructed by a casino resort. How could the NHL continue to be so precious about the perils of gambling while one of its teams was literally housed in a casino?

Bettman has in the past proved quite immune to the admonishments of those who tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so one imagines he is unlikely to be quickly swayed by a letter of complaint, even one on House of Commons letterhead. But the larger question is whether a shift in the industry, and not just accusations of hypocrisy, are enough to move the commissioner off his stance. Right about the time the NHL’s DraftKings deal was announced two months ago, National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times that called for legalized sports betting. He said gambling on sports should be “brought out of the underground and into the sunlight,” since everyone knows that sports betting takes place already in a variety of legal — and illegal — ways.

Silver’s position is eminently sensible, and a long time coming from one of the major sports-league bosses. Point spreads and over/under totals are a routine part of sports coverage, and yet leagues have insisted on pretending that gambling is but an unfortunate byproduct of their industry, as opposed to something that fuels its growth. Meanwhile, dozens of provincial and state governments in Canada and the United States have legalized gambling activities in many ways and grown accustomed to the revenues they provide. Whether they are resort-style casinos or video-lottery terminals at the end of a dingy bar, governments can’t claim that they have no interest in getting additional public dollars by exploiting a vice like gambling. In Ontario, the present government is even opening an online gaming site, the better to capture revenues that currently travel offshore.

Given all that, the reluctance to expand legalized sports betting, subject to scrutiny and controls, seems not just outdated but ridiculous. Who exactly is being protected by the status quo? The potential bettors, who already have countless avenues to gamble if they choose? The leagues, which claim no interest in gambling and yet have things like mandatory injury reports that directly feed into the sports-betting machine? No, mostly the present system benefits the offshore operators, and illegal bookmakers, who provide the product that law-abiding operations cannot. This is what we’re protecting?

TORONTO — There is a website, run through the municipal government in Quebec City, that grants access to cameras positioned around a construction site that will one day become a brand new, 18,000-seat hockey arena.

“I’ve seen it,” National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman said on Monday.

It looks like a nice arena.

“Yes, it does,” Bettman said.

The league’s board of governors is scheduled to meet in Boca Raton, Fla., beginning on Dec. 8, and Bettman said the topic of expansion would be raised. He suggested it would not be raised very strongly, though.

“I understand that, on a soft news day, it makes for interesting fodder and a good story,” he said after speaking at the PrimeTime Sports Management Conference, in Toronto. “But the fact of the matter is, it’s not pressing on us the way it seems to be pressing on some of you.”

Speculation around expansion has been swirling like chimney smoke since August, when Las Vegas emerged as an unexpected front-runner in the race to land a franchise. During his address on Monday, Bettman also mentioned other markets involved in the contest: Quebec City, Seattle and Kansas City.

And then he promptly doused the issue with water.

“There’s no effort crying out for immediate expansion,” he told reporters. “But we are getting expressions of interest.”

Denis Brodeur/NHLI/via Getty ImagesIt has been two decades since the city lost the Nordiques to relocation, when they moved to Colorado to become the Avalanche.

What would it take to move the conversation from expressions of interest to expansion?

“We would have to decide that we’re ready to expand,” he said. “And particularly, as I mentioned before, eastern expansion, at this point, would probably have more issues to deal with than a western expansion simply because we’re already out of balance and I’m not sure that anybody would want to see that get worse.”

The NHL has 16 teams in its Eastern Conference, but only 14 in the Western Conference.

Earlier this month, deputy commissioner Bill Daly told a Minneapolis newspaper that he had met with a potential ownership group in Las Vegas, where another NHL-ready arena is under construction. On Monday, he told reporters in Toronto: “the thing that jumps out at you about a Las Vegas market as a possibility is obviously its uniqueness.”

Hope for a team to fill the new arena in Quebec then, would seem to rest on relocation. It has been two decades since the city lost the Nordiques to relocation, when they moved to Colorado to become the Avalanche. (And also to become a Stanley Cup champion.)

Bettman reacted strongly to the suggestion, specifically a suggestion the Florida Panthers, a team struggling at the gate, would be a candidate to move north. The Panthers rank last in attendance, averaging fewer than 10,000 fans a game, according to data on ESPN.com.

“You know what? I really find it — let me say this the right way — I don’t think it’s fair for the speculation on any franchise, including the Panthers, to be that it’s moving,” Bettman said. “It’s not. The Panthers have good ownership that’s committed to South Florida, and any speculation that team’s future is anywhere but in South Florida is unfounded.”

The arena in Quebec has been scheduled for completion next year. During a lunch with business leaders in Toronto last year, Tim Leiweke, the long-time NHL executive, said Quebec deserved another team: “Like we did in Winnipeg, where we felt an obligation to return the team to Winnipeg … do we not, as a league, also owe Quebec another start?”

There are other intriguing ties.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques BoissinotThe fenced in construction site for the NHL-sized arena Monday, June 17, 2013 in Quebec City.

When Rogers Communications locked up the exclusive Canadian rights to the NHL with its massive 12-year deal worth $5.2-billion last year, it signed two sub-licenses. One was with the CBC, and the other was with TVA Sports, which is owed by Quebecor Media, a company controlled by Pierre Karl Péladeau, a lead figure in the repatriation speculation.

Bettman acknowledged the league has “heard” from interests in Quebec City. But he also said the same for Kansas City, Seattle and Las Vegas. He said the league is listening, but that it is not in a formal expansion process.

“What you look at is: market, arena and ownership — ownership probably being the most important,” he said. “And then you decide whether or not you think it’s time to add another club … or two … or three, or however many.”

Bettman suggested that even if the NHL were to announce expansion plans — he made a point to repeat the “even if” part several times during an interview — it would likely take two or three years for the team to begin play.

“I’m not casting it in stone, because I haven’t given it enough thought,” he said. “Which tells you how far along we are in the process.”

In the same week that the National Hockey League announced a partnership agreement with daily fantasy operation DraftKings, league commissioner Gary Bettman appeared on CNN to declare his opposition to gambling.

“Do you want people at football and basketball games rooting for the spread or rooting for their favourite team?” Bettman said in reply to CNN’s Rachel Nichols, whose interview aired on Friday night on her show Unguarded.

The role of gambling in sports has become a hot topic. National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver wrote an op-ed for Friday’s edition of The New York Times that said “Congress should adopt a federal framework that allows states to authorize betting on professional sports.”

The NBA announced a partnership this week with FanDuel, a competing sports fantasy betting operation.

“I think there needs some attention to be paid to what sport is going to represent to young people,” Bettman said. “Should it be viewed in the competitive team oriented sense that it is now, or does it become a vehicle for betting, which may in effect change the atmosphere in the stadiums and the arenas.”

If you’ve been following the Major League Baseball playoffs, you’ve probably heard that one of Bud Selig’s last moves as commissioner was to establish a “pace of game” committee to study why ballgames take eons to play.

It’s not the first time someone has tried to crack this nut, just as the Royal & Ancient’s most recent undertaking — a global online questionnaire polling golfers’ opinions on causes of and possible solutions to that sport’s pace of play problem — is about the 17th go-round of that discussion.

(Remember Arnold Palmer and the USGA’s “While We’re Young” campaign? That was good for laughs, but did it move the needle?)

The reasons, in each case, should be fairly obvious.

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In baseball, it’s because many pitchers feel each throw should be preceded by a walk around the mound, careful study, a rub of the cap bill, four or five shake-offs of the signals, a step-off to dig at the rubber, perhaps a heart-to-heart with the catcher.

And because hitters feel it is their duty to step out of the batter’s box, adjust the Velcro on both gloves several times, pine-tar the bat, check their elbow pads, spit and grab their crotches before stepping back in to face the next offering.

In golf, it’s because amateurs learn from the pros they see on TV that you should always have an elaborate pre-shot routine, never be ready when it’s your turn to hit, and walk around the green studying putts from all angles and lining up using microscopic adjustments of the Magic Marker guideline you’ve drawn on the ball.

Jose Ignacio Ortiz, 65, was found dead in an apartment building on Melville Ave. on Jan. 19. Police have arrested a Toronto woman in connection with the case, charging her with murder. [caption id="attachment_255309" align="alignright" width="310"]<a href="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ortiz.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-255309" alt="Handout " src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ortiz.jpg&quot; width="310" height="465" /></a> Handout[/caption]
Toronto police have charged a woman with second-degree murder in the death of a reclusive man in the Dupont and Ossington area.
Leahann Hohmann, 50, has been charged in the death of 65-year-old Ignacio Ortiz. The Toronto woman is expected to attend a bail hearing on the matter Thursday morning at Old City Hall.
Mr. Ortiz was found dead in an apartment building on Melville Ave. on Jan. 19. Toronto Police and Fire Services made the discovery after receiving a call to investigate the smell of natural gas coming from his room.
Following a post-mortem examination, the cause of death was identified as “blunt force trauma,” leading to the matter being declared a homicide. It was the city's third homicide in a five-day span and fourth of 2013.
“The gas itself was the reason we were in the apartment. I’m not convinced that it had anything to do with the murder of Mr. Ortiz,” said Det.-Sgt. Pauline Gray of the Toronto Police Homicide Squad.
Originally from Ecuador, Mr. Ortiz was an unemployed resident of Toronto at the time of his death and had been living at the apartment for a number of years, said Det.-Sgt. Gray.
He also battled addictions to alcohol and drugs, including crack cocaine.
“Mr. Ortiz was an addict and struggled with his addictions and as such, the majority of time was in his residence,” said Sgt.-Det. Gray. He was known within the small community that he lived.”
The detective also revealed Mr. Ortiz was known to police more than 20 years ago, but was a “fairly reclusive” man.
<em>National Post</em>

The only encouraging news out of all this is that it appears we may have reached a watershed moment in sports, where actual experimentation with possible remedies may replace the griping which has always been about as effective as complaining about the weather.

If so, expect it to happen first in the minor leagues.

It’s hardly a scoop that professional sports leagues underwrite farm systems so that their prospects have a place to refine their games before the best of them graduate to the big time.

What is relatively new is that those same sports leagues are now sending their rulebooks to the minors, too — and not just for fine-tuning.

Under fire on dozens of fronts, from concussions to boring games to archaic rules to new ones that have produced unintended consequences, the big leagues have turned their feeder systems into arm’s-length laboratories, where fresh ideas can be tested without appearing to be responding to outcries from the know-nothing public.

At the moment, the American Hockey League is experimenting with seven-minute overtime periods, which become 3-on-3 at the first whistle after three minutes. It is aimed at cutting down drastically on the number of shootouts, and so far it is working. As of Thursday, 14 of the 16 games that were tied after regulation were settled in overtime.

If the NHL adopts it, in addition to the existing rule change under which teams switch ends at the start of overtime — meaning long line changes and the potential for mistakes made through fatigue — the shootout might quickly become a rarity rather than a regular, and unsatisfactory, roll of the dice.

“I think our coaches and players and general managers feel that they would rather see the game settled in something other than a shootout,” said AHL president and CEO Dave Andrews.

I think our coaches and players feel that they would rather see the game settled in something other than a shootout

The USHL, a prime feeder for the NCAA, experimented during its pre-season with not allowing penalty-killing teams to ice the puck. The result? Power play success rates were up to 22% from 11% the year before. (The USHL was also the first to experiment with hybrid icing, which the NHL adopted six years later).

In baseball, if Selig’s pace committee actually moves on some of the excruciating slowpokes, maybe you can expect to see pitch clocks, or timers on batters stepping out, with appropriate penalties such as a tardy pitcher being penalized a ball in the count after a first warning, or a procrastinating batter administered a strike by the umpire. Some of these things are being tested in Arizona Fall League games now.

American football could benefit from this month’s inception of the Fall Experimental Football League, which is off to a rocky start but wants to become an NFL feeder system. As part of its mandate, kickers attempt extra points from the right or left hash marks 35 yards out, field goals from outside the hash marks only, and kickoffs from the 25-yard-line to discourage touchbacks — while protecting kick returners from horrific collisions by making the receiving team line up eight players in a blocking zone between the kicking team’s 35 and 45-yard lines.

The NFL hasn’t said it would adopt any of these changes, mind you. Nor is it likely to leap at the Canadian Football League’s contribution to this year’s rules conversation: the now reviewable (complete with coach’s challenge) pass interference calls, or non-calls.

If the CFL had a minor league, it’s where that rule change surely would be sent, on a long conditioning stint.

Quebec City, Las Vegas, Seattle, Toronto and Saskatoon — yes, even Saskatoon! — have each recently been touted, in one form or another, as possible homes for a new NHL team. On Monday night, they shared something else in common: They drew nearly as many fans as the Florida Panthers.

The Panthers, who had opened the season with consecutive losses, were at home to play the Ottawa Senators on Monday night. It was a school night in South Florida, and it was the Senators, who might not have the star power they once held.

This is a turbulent time for the franchise in South Florida, with ownership reportedly set on reworking arrangements at home, with its publicly owned arena. On Sunday, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel began a long story with a question: “Should Broward County let the Florida Panthers go?”

As county officials grapple with the hockey team’s $78.4 million bailout request, and agonize over the fate of the publicly owned BB&T Center in Sunrise, a consultant is analyzing whether the arena could survive without the National Hockey League team.

“The primary purpose of this phase is to determine the strength of the market to support the BB&T Center without the presence of the Panthers,” says a newly signed $137,500 contract between Broward County and national consultants Barrett Sports Group, LLC, and Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.

Do the Panthers really attract enough tourists to justify the money spent on them from increased tourism? Attendance figures would argue otherwise.

Adding to the pressure off the ice is the fact the Panthers have generally been terrible on the ice. The team has qualified for post-season play only four times since landing in the sunshine 20 years ago. It has not won a playoff round — not a single series — since its surprise trip to the Stanley Cup final in 1996.

It’s not often a national institution gets picked up and turned on its head. Canada doesn’t have that many institutions to begin with, and we’re not prone to drastic measures. Careful scrutiny and cautious tinkering is more our style.

But when you’ve agreed to pay $5.2 billion for the rights to show hockey games, gradual evolution is a luxury you can’t afford. So it’s no surprise that when the National Hockey League season opens tonight, Canadian viewers are likely to find themselves confronted with substantial changes from the cozy, comfortable broadcasts to which we’ve become accustomed.

Plenty has been written about the plans of Rogers Communications since it reached an agreement with the NHL for exclusive Canadian rights to its games for a 12-year period, in all languages, on all “platforms”. In addition to regular season contests, Rogers has sole broadcast rights to the Stanley Cup playoffs and final, the NHL All-Star Game, the draft lottery, the draft and the annual awards show. In the lobby of Rogers headquarters in Toronto, a digital clock has been ticking down relentlessly to “puck drop”. Hockey fans – which means most of Canada – have been told they’ll have access to more hockey than they’ve ever dreamed. They’ll find it coming at them from all corners: web, phone, tablet and old-fashioned TV. But all the advance warning can’t replace what they see for themselves when they tune in tonight.

It’s a big bet for Rogers, which has seen its stock price fall since gaining the rights and has a chequered history of customer relations. Rogers is also a joint owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, a huge financial success that consistently underperforms on the ice. Recently ranked the worst sports franchise in North America by ESPN, it nonetheless soaks fans for some of the continent’s highest prices. Even resale tickets for the Leafs cost twice the league average. So both the company and the fans have a lot riding on the viewing experience.

The worst that could happen would be for NHL games to be turned into a Canadian version of the over-dramatized, over-sentimentalized National Football League. NFL broadcasts succeed so spectacularly because they so effectively capture the essence of American sports culture: big, loud, brash, cocky, confident, innovative, and wildly entertaining. But that’s not Canada: Sidney Crosby is lionized enough, we don’t need him turned into a god-man with syrupy overdubs about the struggles he’s overcome and a sound track lifted from a 1950s cowboy drama. (The NFL approach also gets embarrassing when the news is otherwise full of reports on players’ drug use, abuse charges and assault records.)

John Wilson/AFP/Getty Images)Fruit bats as they hang from a tree in Gayndah, South Eastern Queensland. Scientists studying bats have found dozens of new members of a virus family linked to human disease, and warned of possible exposure as the winged mammals are driven out of forests into the cities.

There is no question that the hockey formula needed dusting. Though comfortable, hockey broadcasts have coasted into a stale familiarity. A big reason Don Cherry draws such big numbers is the weakness of the alternative: disinterested players mouthing memorized banalities to bland questioning, expert commentators of varying ability arguing among themselves over whether a particular “head shot” was legal or illegal, lengthy recitations of obscure contractual codicils preventing Player ‘A’ from accepting the multi-million-dollar offer being dangled in front of him.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungRon MacLean and George Stroumboulopoulos.

Maybe Rogers will come up with something new and different. Or maybe not. George Stroumboulopoulos will have some proving to do before he can convince many viewers he’s an improvement on Ron MacLean, who, despite Rogers’ denials, has been clearly shoved aside from his role as the face of the franchise. Though MacLean loyally says he’s “looking forward” to being stuck in frozen arenas across the country watching local teams slug it out as part of a new feature, his enthusiasm and depth of knowledge will set a high standard to match. Particularly worrying is the rumoured motive behind his exile: he got on the wrong side of Commissioner Gary Bettman by daring to challenge him aggressively on televised interviews. Rogers now says it’s a “partner” with the NHL but won’t act as a cheerleader, a pledge that’s easily made but may be difficult to keep. Bettman is no shrinking violet and has overseen three lockouts – one of which lasted an entire season – to get his way in contract talks. Needless to say, another stoppage in play could have costly implications for Rogers.

Whatever the case, Canadians won’t stop watching hockey. Whether their appetite is as gargantuan as Rogers hopes remains to be seen. To recoup its investment, Rogers will have to attract and hold an audience at unprecedented levels. It’s in the fans’ interest that it succeed without turning the game into a mouthpiece for the NHL, its owners and its commissioner. It’s the game that counts and the players who make the game what it is. Whoever owns the rights, it’s still Canada’s game.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/10/08/kelly-mcparland-rogers-hits-the-ice-for-rookie-nhl-season-with-big-contract-and-high-expectations/feed/0stdHKN_Flames_Oilers_20140322THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungTHE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungMaple Leafs success would be a problem: Gary Bettman on the challenges of a second NHL team in Torontohttp://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/23/maple-leafs-success-would-be-a-problem-gary-bettman-on-the-challenges-of-a-second-nhl-team-in-toronto/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/23/maple-leafs-success-would-be-a-problem-gary-bettman-on-the-challenges-of-a-second-nhl-team-in-toronto/#commentsTue, 23 Sep 2014 15:06:27 +0000http://sports.nationalpost.com/?p=250730

TORONTO — If the NHL ever chooses to add a second team in Toronto, that expansion franchise has to hope the Maple Leafs’ Stanley Cup drought continues.

Speaking in a hypothetical sense on the topic of a second team in the hockey-mad market, commissioner Gary Bettman said it’s one thing to consider.

“If we decided that we were putting a second team in Ontario, and the year the team was supposed to start, the Leafs won the Cup, that second team wouldn’t exist,” Bettman said in a conversation with George Stroumboulopoulos at a Canadian Club luncheon.

Stroumboulopoulos, the new host of “Hockey Night In Canada” and a self-professed Montreal Canadiens fan, interrupted Bettman to say, “That’s a big hypothetical.”

Bettman continued: “That’s part of the dynamic because the attention gets diluted, either two ways or three ways, and when you have historically established teams with great histories and traditions, the second team — even if the first team isn’t having tremendous success at the time — the second team will never quite get the premier coverage.”

A recent Twitter report by Howard Bloom of Sports Business News said the NHL would expand by four teams, one each in Quebec City, Seattle, Las Vegas and Toronto, by 2017. Bettman took issue with that report, which noted the expansion fees would add up to $1.4 billion, because it “under-priced” what that would be worth.

Bettman on Monday reiterated that the NHL has no current plans to undergo a formal expansion process. But expansion was still a hot topic, given the league’s financial success and unbalanced alignment.

“What most people say to me is well, there’s 16 teams in the East, 14 in the West. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you count?” Bettman said. “And I say yes I can count but I also can tell time and we finally have all 16 teams in the Eastern Time Zone in the right place. But you don’t expand just to fulfil somebody’s notion of symmetry. It’s a very important business decision to make, and you do it for the right reasons at the right time.”

A second team in Toronto, even in the Eastern Time Zone, could theoretically play in the Western Conference for the sake of balance. The Leafs played in the West until the 1998-99 season.

But that wouldn’t solve every problem.

“When you see markets with two teams or three teams, the first team can do pretty well and the second team not as much, even if it has on-ice success, and the third team about the same,” Bettman said.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungNHL Commissioner Gary Bettman scrums with journalists after discussing the launch of the upcoming season at a meeting of The Canadian Club of Toronto, in Toronto on Monday September 22, 2014.

One team is always going to be more popular, like the New York Rangers despite trailing the Islanders and New Jersey Devils in Stanley Cups over the past 30-plus years.

Asked about territorial exclusivity on the part of the Leafs, Bettman said all it would take to approve any expansion franchise is a three-quarters vote, or 23 of the 30 teams.

“Nobody has a veto,” Bettman said.

Of course the NHL is several steps away from even getting to that point. The league continues to listen to expressions of interest from several markets, but Bettman reiterated there are no current plans to expand.

“I know people think I have this list tucked away in a vault with cities lined up,” Bettman said. “We don’t.”

“This is an important business decision if you’re going to expand. In addition to being one involving a lot of money, it’s a fundamentally important decision if you’re going to do that.”

Goodell has been harshly criticized for being too lenient or not acting quickly enough to punish Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and other players involved in a rash of recent domestic violence incidents.

“I think he’s working very hard in a difficult situation,” Bettman, the NHL’s longtime commissioner, said Monday.

Bettman, who has been in his position longer than any current commissioner in North American professional sports, said it’s impossible to be too comfortable in a job like his or Goodell’s because unpredictable things happen. Comparing it to being a CEO of any major company, he added there’s no luxury of having a night off.

“Whenever that phone rings, and sometimes it does at two in the morning, you’ve got to respond and you’ve got to have your A-game otherwise you’re liable to make a mistake, and when you make a mistake in this position, it gets magnified,” Bettman said at a meeting for The Canadian Club of Toronto. “And it doesn’t matter if you’re right 99 out of 100 times, which is a pretty good batting record, it’s that one that you’ll have to live with and deal with.”

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Arrested for punching his then-fiancee and now wife earlier this year, Rice was originally suspended for two games, but after a video surfaced on Sept. 8 showing the violent attack, he was released by the Baltimore Ravens and suspended indefinitely. Peterson has been indicted on child-abuse charges and deactivated by the Minnesota Vikings but has not been suspended.

At a news conference last week, Goodell took responsibility for the league’s failings in investigating Rice, saying he “didn’t get it right.”

During several interviews Monday, Bettman didn’t reference Rice or Peterson. Instead, he spoke in general terms about how professional sports leagues can handle those kinds of situations.

“You do the best you can, and that’s something in areas that are important we’ve tried to be proactive,” Bettman said. “It doesn’t mean that things are going to happen in any league, in any business, in any situation that you can’t control, but we try to address issues head-on and we try to do the right thing on a consistent basis.”

Bettman said the NHL’s security department and behavioural health counsellors have talked to players about the topic of domestic violence for more than a decade.

“Based on our experience to date, we believe that the appropriate procedures are in effect that we can do what we need to do on a case-by-case basis,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “I am extraordinarily proud of our players and how they conduct themselves. If and when something needs to be addressed in terms of discipline, it will be. But more importantly we try to focus, with the Players’ Association, on educating and counselling.”

The collective bargaining agreement includes procedures on how to handle off-ice incidents and gives the NHL power to suspend a player amid a criminal investigation if failing to do so would “create a substantial risk of material harm to the legitimate interests and/or reputation of the league.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris YoungNHL Commissioner Gary Bettman got up close and personal with new Hockey Night in Canada Host George Stroumboulopoulos on Monday.

After the NFL instituted a new policy that made a first domestic-violence offence a six-game suspension, Bettman said the NHL would continue to handle incidents on a case-by-case basis because it has not been an issue that requires setting a standard punishment.

In October 2013, Colorado Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov was charged with felony kidnapping and assault for attacking his girlfriend. Varlamov was not suspended, and the charges were dropped in December when prosecutors said they did not have enough evidence to convict him.

Bettman was not specifically asked about Varlamov’s arrest in light of the NFL’s handling of domestic violence.

He said sports leagues have an obligation to try to do the right things.

“I don’t think anybody who’s in the league, be it as an owner, an executive or a player, has any illusions as to what’s expected of them,” Bettman said. “Our code of conduct is we expect you to do the right thing, and if you don’t, we hold you accountable.”

In a question-and-answer session with new “Hockey Night In Canada” host George Stroumboulopoulos and those attending the Canadian Club luncheon, Bettman also addressed expansion and other topics related to on-ice action.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian WyldAssembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo addresses a news conference in Ottawa, Thursday, Jan.10, 2013.

Bettman reiterated that the NHL has no current plans to undergo a formal expansion process beyond the 30 teams that have existed since 2000.

“I’m not suggesting that at some point in the future we might not look at, but we’re not ready to do it now,” he said. “And I don’t want to build up anybody’s expectations because that’s not unfair to people in a community that want to have a franchise.”

One recent report said the NHL would expand by four teams, one each in Quebec City, Las Vegas and Seattle and a second franchise in Toronto, by 2017. Asked by Stroumboulopoulos about his philosophical opinion on having two teams in one market, Bettman explained in hypothetical terms that there are pitfalls, especially in Toronto.

“If we decided that we were putting a second team in Ontario, and the year the team was supposed to start, the Leafs won the Cup, that second team wouldn’t exist,” Bettman said. “When you have historically established teams with great histories and traditions, the second team — even if the first team isn’t having tremendous success at the time — the second team will never quite get the premier coverage.”

But the commissioner said if it ever does, prospective owners may have to pay up big time.

Sports Business News reported via Twitter last week the NHL will expand into Las Vegas, Seattle, and Quebec City while adding a second franchise in Toronto by 2017.

On Wednesday, Bettman called the report a “complete fabrication,” and took issue with the franchise fees cited in the story — US$1.4-billion, or $350-million per team.

“The part of the story that I found particularly difficult is: suggesting that we would sell four franchises for $1.4-billion is way too low,” Bettman said. “It undervalues our franchises.”

The last two expansion teams, the Minnesota Wild and the Columbus Blue Jackets, paid $80-million each in expansion fees in 2000, but league revenues have soared since then.

Bettman said the league is not looking to expand or relocate any franchises. He added that no teams were looking to move, including the struggling Florida Panthers — even if their new owner has concerns about the club’s arena lease.

“Nobody’s moving,” said Bettman. “And speculation to the contrary not only is wrong, it’s unfair to the team and their fans who are being speculated about.

“Our franchises have never been healthier. Our league, in terms of its economic footing, has never been healthier.”

He made the remarks at an event put on by a media company, Quebecor, that hopes to bring NHL hockey back to Quebec City.

NHL coffers were fattened by a 12-year deal worth $5.2-billion with Rogers, which will begin broadcasting games this season on Sportsnet. Quebecor reportedly will pay Rogers a total of $1.5-billion over 12 years for the French-language portion of the broadcast rights, with games aired mainly on TVA Sports.

Quebecor bought naming rights on a $400-million arena due to be completed by fall 2015 in Quebec City, which hopes to land an NHL club.

Bettman attended TVA Sports’ hockey launch at a suburban restaurant along with former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who is chairman of Quebecor, Montreal Canadiens owner Geoff Molson, Quebec Major Junior Hockey League president Gilles Courteau and other league and company officials.

However, Bettman had no encouraging words for those looking to revive the Quebec Nordiques, who left in 1994 to become the Colorado Avalanche.

“We don’t want to build up anybody’s expectations,” he said. “We’re not in a position to expand.

“We’re certainly not in position to expand into the East. We’ve been very candid and up front that if in fact we go through an expansion process, the world will know about it. But we’re not looking to relocate any franchises, and we’re not looking to expand. We’ve been very clear about that since Day 1 when we were told about the building of the new arena.”

Still, rumours that the league is at least considering adding teams have been circulating. A report from Vancouver last week said a team in Las Vegas was a “done deal.”

Bettman said there’s plenty of interest from people wanting NHL expansion teams but added the league hasn’t even begun to research the issue.

In June, Bettman said that if there were enough expansion candidates the league’s board of governors “may well invoke a formal expansion process and we will look at everything.”

The premise was that Canadians despise Bettman for helping facilitate the move of the Quebec Nordiques to Colorado (it might have mentioned the original Jets from Winnipeg to Phoenix, too) — as well as presiding over three lockouts, shutting down the league for an entire year, taking hockey into a bunch of dead-weight sunbelt markets, and other assorted crimes against the sport.

But the subtext was that Canadians really ought to appreciate Bettman, because he has taken the highest expression of our national passion to a position of unprecedented financial health, helped engineer a nearly-tenfold increase in league revenues from when he took over in 1993, and just generally put hockey back on the major-sport map.

That none of these things really matters to fans is, apparently, beside the point. The story didn’t mention ticket prices, skipped lightly over on-ice issues, ignored the fact that hockey has never been anywhere but on the map in Canada, and didn’t quite nail the crux of our discontent: i.e., that Canadian TV revenues drive the economic bus, but control of the league is ever more American.

However — and it’s a big however — there was no denying Bettman his moment in the sun (figuratively speaking) Wednesday, when the Stanley Cup media assembled in the bowels of the Staples Center a couple of hours before Game 1 for the commissioner’s state-of-the-league news conference.

Someone suggested he could have stood at the front of the room and spent the full half-hour pointing and cackling at his critics, and we’d have had to hand it to him.

Handouthmed Al-Jaabari, top commander of Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam brigades, poses for a picture after a prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Cairo, in this October 18, 2011 file photo.

He was named sports executive of the year at the Sports Business Awards in New York, and the NHL was chosen league of the year.

There is also no denying his ability to field questions and answer them with absolute precision and parry others with such a piercing intellect, it is breathtaking to behold.

Wednesday, there was so little at which to cavil, the questions were almost all procedural.

Bettman noted that there was “a little bit of symmetry” to the first major sports clash of teams from New York and L.A. since the Yankees-Dodgers World Series of 1981, “inasmuch as the Kings played an outdoor game this season at Dodger Stadium and the Rangers played a game at Yankee Stadium as part of the Stadium Series.”

In reflecting on the 2013-14 campaign, he said, “We had the Coors Lite Stadium Series, the Bridgestone Winter Classic at the Big House, the Tim Horton’s Heritage Classic at Vancouver, we took a little trip to Sochi for the Olympics, we had new divisional alignment and a playoff format — all of this combined truly made this a season like no other.

Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesThe Kings-Blackhawks series is one of seven to go seven games in these playoffs.

“We set records for attendance and viewership on TV … in fact, by almost any measure, this may have been the most successful season, on and off the ice, in league history.

“As for the playoffs, of 14 series, seven have gone seven games, I think four have gone six … it’s just been phenomenal.”

Hard to argue with anything but the attendance claim — actual attendances and ticket sales being “fluid,” to use the polite term for “occasionally laughable” — even if you were in the mood.

Of the major points Bettman addressed:

• The much-rumoured World Cup for 2016, either with or without the 2018 Olympics as a part of a more comprehensive international schedule, is “not something that’s fully baked.”

Martin Carrier was praised after he recounted his experience standing up against Mafia attempts to control Montreal’s construction industryWith its stream of testimony from crooked contractors and corrupt civil servants, Quebec’s Charbonneau commission has not been a place to boost one’s faith in human nature.
But on Thursday, a businessman from Quebec City briefly changed that.
Martin Carrier, president of Céramiques Lindo, was praised for his courage after he recounted his experience standing up against Mafia attempts to control Montreal’s construction industry.
[related_links /]
Mr. Carrier testified that he was driving his daughter to guitar class one Saturday morning in 2004 when his cell phone rang. A recording of the call was played for the commission. His daughter answered, and then passed the phone to her father.
[caption id="attachment_233621" align="alignright" width="310"]<img class="size-full wp-image-233621" title="condolences_Page_2.jpg" alt="" src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/condolences-card-front.jpg&quot; height="465" width="310" /> Charbonneau Commission[/caption]
“Mr. Carrier, Martin Carrier?” the caller asked.
“Yes.”
“You did some ceramic work in Montreal?”
“Yes.”
“We’d like you to stop coming here to do work.”
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am, OK? Because the next time you won’t be walking away from here . . . . You’ve been warned.”
Mr. Carrier testified that he knew a Montreal competitor, Francesco Bruno of B.T. Céramique, was unhappy he had bid on a job at the Université de Montréal worth $400,000. A week after he attended a meeting for bidders, Mr. Bruno called to tell him he was short of work and it was his turn to land a contract, Mr. Carrier testified. Eventually Mr. Carrier’s turn would come if he played along.
Mr. Carrier talked it over with his partner and they decided to proceed with his bid. “I called him back and said, ‘We don’t work like that,’ ” he said.
After the threatening call, he went to police. A month later he got another call from the same person, he said. This time it was very short: “You didn’t listen. We warned you. It’s over.”
<blockquote class="pullquote">
You didn’t listen. We warned you. It’s over
</blockquote>
It was two years later, after a police operation led to the arrests of high-ranking members of Montreal’s Rizzuto Mafia clan, that an RCMP officer informed him the threats had come from Francesco Del Balso, an underboss for the Rizzutos with a violent reputation. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to cocaine trafficking and conspiracy, including extortion, and received a 15-year sentence.
Even before learning who had been on the other end of the call, Mr. Carrier said he was angered and shaken by the threats. “We are supposed to be free in Quebec, be able to go where we like and not be controlled,” he said. He said his business became more selective in which projects it bid on, looking at “who it came from, who was likely to bid” in order to avoid ruffling feathers.
[caption id="attachment_233622" align="alignright" width="620"]<img src="http://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/condolences-card.jpg&quot; alt="" title="Condolences" width="620" height="465" class="size-full wp-image-233622" /> Charbonneau Commission[/caption]
In 2010, Mr. Carrier told his story to a TV news show and was hit with a libel suit from Mr. Bruno, which was later withdrawn. The following spring, a greeting card arrived for him at his office offering “the most sincere condolences.” Inside was a personalized message: “Dear friend. Don’t bid any more in Montreal. You run the risk of having your family receive a card just like this. Final warning.”
He turned the card over to police but they were unable to find fingerprints. He told the inquiry he associated it with Mr. Bruno. “I don’t know who else wanted to stop me from bidding in Montreal,” he said.
B.T. Céramique had its contractor’s licence stripped last January by Quebec’s Régie du batiment. The company and Mr. Bruno pleaded guilty to eight counts of tax evasion in 2011 and received a $1.3-million fine.
Commission investigator Eric Vecchio testified that he interviewed Mr. Del Balso at a federal penitentiary to discuss the threats against Mr. Carrier. Mr. Del Balso told him he made the calls as “a favour” to Nicolo Rizzuto Sr., the Mafia patriarch killed in 2010, the inquiry heard.
As Mr. Carrier left the stand, Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, who heads the commission, offered praise that contrasted with the pointed questions and rolled eyes directed at previous witnesses.
“Mr. Carrier, I thank you very much and I congratulate you for the exceptional courage you have shown,” she said, “and I encourage others to follow your lead.”

• Expansion is not even at the talking stages, though Bettman says he is always listening to expressions of interest from Seattle and Quebec City.

• On the league’s concussion protocol, which seemed seriously flawed in cases involving Columbus’s James Wisniewski and Montreal’s Dale Weise, to name just a few of many: “Concussions were down, moderate low double-digits in percentage, man-games lost were about half. I think that’s a function of the protocols working. We are serious about them, they are being enforced, and if we think there is a violation, we follow up, and if in a particular case there needs to be discipline imposed, we will do it.

“Part of what we’re going through is an education process to get players to understand that it’s important that if they’re having symptoms, they let them be addressed.”

• Instant replay, he indicated, could not be significantly expanded without “unintended consequences” though the goal/no goal reviews numbered “upwards of 8,000” this past season, “and if we get five wrong a year, it’s a lot.”

AP Photo/Jae C. HongThe Rangers had to play 20 playoff games to get to the Stanley Cup final.

Undeniably, this has been one terrific post-season.

That the two Stanley Cup finalists, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers, had to play 21 and 20 games, respectively — one fewer than the maximum — just to get here is a testament to the top-to-bottom competitiveness of the playoff teams.

But the quality of the games, for the most part, has been spectacular, too.

So Bettman wins 2013-14 by a knockout over the peanut gallery. Even the Las Vegas judges would give it to him by a decision.

Will he ever present another Stanley Cup without being booed? Probably not, even in the U.S.

As for Canada, well, the way things are going north of the border, it’s probably not something he needs to worry about for quite some time.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Gary Bettman has always been careful not to get fans’ hopes up in cities that want an NHL franchise.

That continued Tuesday when the commissioner reiterated the league has no official expansion plans in the offing. It won’t happen for the 2014-15 season and maybe not even in 2015-16, but that hasn’t stopped the calls from pouring in.

“We’re getting lots of expressions of interest, and no decisions have been made to do anything other than listen,” Bettman said after the league’s board of governors meeting wrapped up. We haven’t embarked on a formal expansion process, but when people want to talk to us, we listen.”

If the NHL listens and decides to move forward with expanding at some point in the near future, Quebec City, Seattle and Toronto figure to be the front-runners. But Bettman insisted there’s no ranking of potential cities and that no decision has been made to expand.

Related

That’s despite uneven conferences right now — 16 teams in the East and 14 in the West — that deputy commissioner Bill Daly conceded was a bit of misalignment. Getting up to 32 would make for four divisions of eight teams each and solve the disparity in playoff odds.

It seems like a natural move, especially considering the expansion fees the NHL could get. But Bettman said a few things must be looked at before considering a place.

“When there’s an expression of interest, you look at three factors predominately, show-stoppers so to speak,” he said. “You want to understand the market and can it support NHL hockey? Would it be a good addition to the league? Two, you’ve got to have an arena and three, and perhaps most important, it comes down to ownership.”

I clearly have acknowledged that the Pacific Northwest has a strong interest in hockey

Ownership is one of the keys to the NHL’s success in the big picture. Bettman was quick to point to negative attention around the Phoenix Coyotes and how they’ve been sold along with the Florida Panthers and New Jersey Devils within the past six months.

“My my, how far we’ve come since the summer, when all the articles and speculation were about all these franchises that were supposedly in trouble, which we never believed were,” Bettman said. “The franchises have never been stronger. So we went from relocation in your view and distress to now we should be expanding. Everybody needs to slow down. We don’t operate like that. Everything in due course. If, in fact, there’s a due course to pursue.”

The city of Markham, Ontario, recently struck down plans to build an NHL-ready arena as the league made it clear it should not happen with the hopes of getting a team. An arena is being built in Quebec City, and one could be on the way in Seattle to lure an NBA team, as well.

“I clearly have acknowledged that the Pacific Northwest has a strong interest in hockey,” Daly said of the Seattle expansion possibility.

As of now everything is just a possibility. But just drawing interest isn’t a bad thing.

“The fact is there are lots of expressions of interest from lots of different places and that’s great, it’s gratifying,” Bettman said. “It shows the business and the game are healthy because there is so much interest and people want to be a part of the game and invest in the game.”

The original concussion lawsuit against the NHL included 10 former players, and that number has already grown.

More than 200 players have joined, according to lawyers Steve Silverman and Mel Owens, who are at the forefront of the suit.

Owens, an NFL linebacker-turned-disability lawyer said in a phone interview Wednesday that “hundreds” of ex-NHL players are going to become part of the suit, which was filed in U.S. federal court in Washington on Monday.

“These are 10 players, but there’s hundreds of guys that, they’re in the lawsuit,” said Owens, who works for NBO Law in Beverly Hills, Calif. “They just haven’t been named yet. They’re going to be there.”

Related

Sportsnet.ca was the first to report that more than 200 players joined the effort, which began with 10 players: Gary Leeman, Bradley Aitken, Darren Banks, Curt Bennett, Richard Dunn, Warren Holmes, Robert Manno, Blair James Stewart, Morris Titanic and Rick Vaive. Former New York Islanders centre Bob Bourne announced he joined the suit shortly after it was filed.

Leeman and Vaive in recent days have politely declined comment about their involvement, deferring to Silverman and Owens, who said he did not know how many players would wind up being a part of it.

Once the players find out that, ‘Oh, there may be hope for me. I might be able to get some help and some treatment to address my quality of life issues,’ I’m sure they’ll be in contact

“I don’t know how many living alumni there are in the NHL that have these significant problems,” Owens said. “I don’t know that. But like in the NFL, it just matured over time. Once the players find out that, ‘Oh, there may be hope for me. I might be able to get some help and some treatment to address my quality of life issues,’ I’m sure they’ll be in contact.”

More than 4,500 former NFL players sued that league in a case that Owens said has “parallels” to this one. That settlement was worth US$765-million.

Owens said there wasn’t any recruiting being done to get more players to join the cause. He sent tweets to several former players informing them of the case beginning Monday.

“All of our business that we’ve ever done has all been by word of mouth. The players are the ones that talk amongst themselves,” he said. “Once I have knowledge as a player, like you have knowledge and like everybody else has knowledge, the word spreads. Back in the ’60s and the ’70s and the ’80s the person with all the knowledge and the power were the owners. They controlled the message.”

In a statement released Monday evening, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly called the subject matter “very serious” and said the league intended to defend the case “vigorously.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/27/more-than-200-former-players-join-concussion-lawsuit-against-nhl/feed/0stdToronto Maple Leafs v Boston BruinsNHL’s own Neanderthal thinking may be its best defence against concussion lawsuit by former playershttp://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/27/only-the-plight-of-a-famous-former-player-will-get-nhl-to-react-to-concussion-lawsuit/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/27/only-the-plight-of-a-famous-former-player-will-get-nhl-to-react-to-concussion-lawsuit/#commentsWed, 27 Nov 2013 22:42:18 +0000http://sports.nationalpost.com/?p=200246

And now, for the topic that would have been front-page news everywhere in Canada on Tuesday had it not been bumped by the $5.2-billion Rogers-NHL TV deal, but which is now two days old and several news cycles beyond the national attention span …

Concussions, that is. (Don’t think I can’t hear you groaning.)

Specifically, the class-action suit brought Monday against the National Hockey League in the District of Columbia by 10 (the number is growing exponentially) former players, essentially alleging that the league knew, or ought to have known, about the dangers of concussions and didn’t do enough to reduce the risk of brain injuries or sufficiently educate players about those dangers.

Stay with me. Focus. I know you’re tired, and your head hurts and you don’t want to think about this any more and you’ve had it with these former players who knew the risks and willingly took the money and now are looking for someone to blame for their headaches and memory loss, like the 4,500 families of National Football League players who accepted a piddling US$765-million settlement from the NFL to shut up and go away.

I know sports was better when you only marveled at the action on the playing surface and knew nothing and cared less about the players’ problems — back when you thought all players were overpaid, anyway. Back when nobody had ever heard of post-concussion syndrome, let alone chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or seen pictures of the diseased brains of athletes after they committed suicide.

Back when men were men and played a man’s game and didn’t whine about the physical or emotional price to be paid in retirement.

Back when owners and GMs and coaches could milk what a player had to give and raise him in a culture of fear for his livelihood, and ostracize him if he didn’t play hurt and cut him if he took too much time off worrying about injuries that didn’t even involve bones sticking through the skin.

Yeah, those were the days.

But we live in a litigious age, and some of these ingrates are now teaming up to seek redress for what they claim were the hidden costs of doing business: the costs the NHL never told them about.

The actual filing of the suit — only the first of many, most likely — is no surprise to anyone. The NHL surely has been waiting for it, and building its counter-argument, for years.

It has publicly pounded the drum for player safety, established committees to study concussions ad nauseam, ever-so-reluctantly moving away from a culture where hits to the head were celebrated to increasingly strict interpretations of Rule 48, to the piece de resistance: mandating that players pounding each other in the head with their fists, deemed an essential part of the game, would be required to keep their helmets on or face a two-minute penalty for (wait for it) unsportsmanlike conduct.

This is progress.

Legal experts have opined on the chances of the players winning their class-action suit, and most think the tough part is going to be proving that in the era when most of these plaintiffs played, the NHL actually had any degree of sophisticated knowledge about diagnosing and treating concussions.

That didn’t stop the NFL from dropping a load of money on its oldtimers, but there are a couple of differences: one being that bare-knuckled fighting is legal, and has ever been, in the NHL.

The culture of hockey is well understood by all who aspire to the world’s best league — “shaking it off” when concussed, even if a player knew he was concussed, is ingrained behaviour. Smelling salts, not quiet rooms, were the standard treatment.

If the NHL seriously believed it had anything to fear from the plaintiffs — those in the current suit, or those from subsequent generations — it would come down hard on any team that flouted the quiet-room/waiting period/re-testing protocol with massive fines, because each team that breaks the rules to rush a player back into the game exposes the league to future litigation. In theory.

But ironically, the NHL’s best defence may be its own neanderthal thinking. For it was ever thus, in hockey.

Even some of its brightest people — let’s use Brian Burke, as an example — trained in law, as is most of the NHL hierarchy, can make a passionate defence of fighting, one that is endorsed by a large percentage of NHL players.

The threat of instant retribution stops the “rats” from running around injuring skilled players, says Burke. “Hear! Hear!” say the players and coaches and GMs. Only one problem. The rats are still running rampant, and skilled players are still getting abused. And the NHL Players Association, which is where the lack of respect ought to be addressed with the membership, appears to have no power to effect change.

And so the argument goes around in circles. Players injure players, but coaches countenance it, and the league demands it, for the satisfaction of its customers.

In the end, very little changes.

The lawsuit will come down to what the NHL knew about concussions, and when it knew it. Did the league deny these players information that might have changed their behaviour, had they known of the consequences to their lives after retirement?

Most of the plaintiffs named to date — Brad Aitken, Darren Banks, Curt Bennett, Bob Bourne, Richie Dunn, Warren Holmes, Gary Leeman, Bob Manno, Blair Stewart, Morris Titanic and Rick Vaive — played in the 70s and 80s. What was the level of medical sophistication on concussions then, and was the NHL privy to it?

Future lawsuits involving players of today, and they surely will come, will have a better case, because there is no hiding from the medical evidence any more.

But it will probably take a prominent player to move the needle of public concern, and force the NHL to react in any substantial way. Rick Vaive isn’t big enough.

It will have to be, as with the NFL, a Junior Seau, shooting himself in the chest so that his brain could be intact for examination. Or a Tony Dorsett, diagnosed with CTE at 59, struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide, taking a flight from Dallas to L.A. to be tested but forgetting why he was on an airplane or where he was going.

Until that guy steps up, one whose name resonates with hockey fans, it’s like the game itself for the NHL’s legal eagles: hard to score, easy to defend.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/27/only-the-plight-of-a-famous-former-player-will-get-nhl-to-react-to-concussion-lawsuit/feed/0stdCal Clutterbuck, Taylor HallKelly McParland: If you like hockey, you can watch Rogers. Or you can watch Rogershttp://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/27/kelly-mcparland-if-you-like-hockey-youll-pay-your-money-and-youll-watch-rogers/
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/27/kelly-mcparland-if-you-like-hockey-youll-pay-your-money-and-youll-watch-rogers/#commentsWed, 27 Nov 2013 15:36:58 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=137382

When the time comes to assess Gary Bettman’s legacy as NHL commissioner, there will be lots to consider.

Overseeing two extended league shutdowns to control costs and reduce player salaries, which were such a success that Mikhail Grabovski will make $14 million not to play for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and another $3 million to play instead in Washington.

Expanding the league into new realms, a plan so effective it necessitated the two work stoppages (see above) to try and halt the haemorrage of financial losses.

And now a sweeping reformation of the TV landscape, which will put national rights to all NHL games into the hands of one company. And what a company. The league had several options when assessing which network to trust with its product: the CBC, which has been broadcasting hockey for 80 years, during which it established a corps of experienced professionals schooled in every aspect of the game and how to present it to Canadians; TSN, which has built up a strong crew of quality broadcasters and analysts while making hockey the core of its lineup; or Rogers. It picked Rogers.

Let’s be fair. There’s nothing to say Rogers can’t raise the level of its broadcasts to match those of its (now former) competition. It’s just to say that, as Postmedia columnist Cam Cole notes, they’re not there yet and will have to significantly pick up their game to eliminate the gap. Thanks to the exclusive nature of the $5.2 billion deal, there will now be lots of hockey talent at loose ends at the two other networks. If Rogers has any money left, it would be well-advised to launch a hiring binge from among those ranks.

And if they don’t? Well, too bad for you, hockey-watching Canada. Because your only alternative will be U.S. broadcasts of U.S. games, which means exposure to the wit and wisdom of such savants as Mad Mike Milbury and the blathermaniac Pierre McGuire.

It might also be wise to prepare for a shifting of comfortable weekend habits. Hockey Night in Canada has always been free. Turn on the CBC, there it is. Will Rogers keep it that way, or demand viewers purchase a package in which the local team can only be seen by buying a pack of other games as well? You want to watch Kessel earn his money, you have to pay for Winnipeg versus Vancouver too. On Tuesday Rogers released a “sample” schedule showing the Leaf game available only on Sportsnet across the country, while the CBC got a Montreal game. Great for Montreal fans, not-so-great for Leaf Nation if they suddenly get stuck with a fat new cable bill.

Don Cherry: ‘Do I have a job?’

Bettman says this is a great deal for hockey fans, and in some aspects it probably is. There will certainly be more games on TV, and on all the other “platforms” Rogers sells. There’s the promise of a “marquee” Sunday game, which makes so much sense it’s no wonder it hasn’t been available before. Despite its venerable past, HNIC could be annoying in its stodginess and hokey gimmickry, and its choice of on-air personalities is hit and miss.

Under new management, that could change. Or, as seems more likely, HNIC could just disappear, fading into memory like the disembodied voice of Foster Hewitt. The theme song is long gone, replaced with someone’s idea of a more catchy, with-it lead-in. Don Cherry will be 80 next year, and Rogers president Keith Pelley is already being careful in his choice of words regarding Coach’s Corner. It’s hard to imagine Ron MacLean jumping ship, or being wooed to do so without Cherry. What else is there: those pointless, tedious intermission interviews with cliche-spouting players? If Rogers is smart, those will be the first to go.

Change happens. Maybe Bettman will notice that TV rights for seven Canadians teams representing 35 million people are earning the league more than double what it gets for rights to 23 U.S. teams playing in a country of 310 million. And maybe that will persuade him to pander less to his U.S. owners and listen more to Canadian fans. (Yeah, good luck with that). It will come at a cost though. Imagine Canada’s entire cellphone network being put into the hands of one company, to package and bundle as it desires, and to charge what it wants. You don’t like it, where else you going to go? It’s a scary thought, especially for something as fundamental to Canada as hockey.

NEW YORK — The idea of NHL hockey outdoors is no longer a novelty. Five Winter Classics have made the sight of a rink on a football or baseball field seem almost normal.

Those events brought such positive attention that the 2013-14 season will include six outdoor games. The league is responding to complaints about watering down the product with a simple message: it’s giving fans what they want.

“If you’re looking at it on a national basis, obviously we’re doing more,” commissioner Gary Bettman said Thursday at Yankee Stadium, which will host two games in January. “But for teams and markets that want to host this [event], for fans that want to attend, we can’t do enough of them.”

In Canada and the United States, the NHL’s “Stadium Series” that includes stops at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium, Chicago’s Soldier Field and Yankee Stadium and the Heritage Classic in Vancouver might not get as much attention as the Winter Classic in Ann Arbor, Mich. But within those areas, they’re can’t-miss events.

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“The reason we’re doing more outdoor games is really what it’s now doing locally,” Bettman said. “This is an incomparable event and what happens is fans get connected to the game in ways they never imagined, we get new fans who, for the first time, will come and be a part of this. This is a fan-oriented, fan-driven event, and that’s why we’re doing so many games so we can bring it to more fans.”

The league expects all six outdoor games to be sellouts. That’s reason enough for Bettman to think that the NHL isn’t providing too much of a good thing.

“Fans love attending this event, the demand that we’re hearing and feeling from our teams and markets and venues wanting to host this game is overwhelming,” Bettman said. “So if you’re actually getting an opportunity to attend this game, you don’t think we’re doing too many of them.”

Going for six in a span of just over two months is part of what NHL COO John Collins called a “pretty unique” season thanks to the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. Planning six outdoor games had a lot to do with timing.

The Winter Classic returns to its New Year’s Day spot when the Toronto Maple Leafs face off against the Detroit Red Wings at Michigan Stadium. The Anaheim Ducks play the Los Angeles Kings at Dodger Stadium the night before the Grammy Awards, and the games between the Rangers and the New Jersey Devils and then the Islanders at Yankee Stadium take place during the lead-up to the Super Bowl at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

“Super Bowl?” Bettman asked rhetorically. “The fact that the Super Bowl happens to be played in NJ around the same time is a plus, but this was really NHL-centric.”

At best it’s impeccable timing and more likely a strategic way for hockey to get attention during as part of the biggest sporting event on the calendar. And it’s also not a coincidence that two outdoor games, the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Chicago Blackhawks at Soldier Field and the Heritage Classic between the Ottawa Senators and Vancouver Canucks at BC Place, take place the week after players return from Sochi.

Chicago is the first city to host a Winter Classic and then get another outdoor game. But Bettman hinted that others — like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Boston and Philadelphia — could benefit if the NHL decides to host multiple outdoor games in the coming years.

“If you’re a team that’s hosted one, now you’re not going to wait 10 or 12 years to get another one back,” Bettman said. “[And] for markets and teams that haven’t had a chance to host it, this brings it more of a reality sooner.”

Those markets include Washington and Minneapolis/St. Paul, either of which could host the 2014 Winter Classic or a Stadium Series game. Reports have also cited Penn State University’s Beaver Stadium as a potential site for a Flyers-Penguins game.

One reason why the NHL isn’t reluctant to experiment with different cities and venues is the impact outdoor games can have on teams, well after the stadium rink is removed.

“I think we’ve seen it over the last five, six years, in the markets that we’ve been in,” Collins said. “We’ve been in Chicago — just at the beginning of their big run where the Blackhawks talked about how it did a couple things. One, they sold a ton more season tickets because that was the way fans could be guaranteed to get tickets into Wrigley. And two, it raised the relevance of the Blackhawks in the Chicago market ahead of them winning the Stanley Cup. a We saw it in Pittsburgh in terms of the impact that the game had in Pittsburgh, which is a football town becoming a hockey town, too.”

Winning titles likely played more of a role in those burgeoning fan bases, but hosting the Winter Classic didn’t hurt. And Bettman doesn’t think it hurts to have six outdoor games instead of one or two, or roughly 0.4 per cent of the 1,230 regular-season games.

It’s unclear if six is the limit, or if there’s a ceiling on how many outdoor games the NHL can hold in a season. Collins said CBC, NBC, the Players’ Association and owners want to see how it goes this time.

“We’re obviously testing ourselves and our hockey operations department to make sure we can put on these six games. We’re confident that we can,” Bettman said. “But we’ll take a deep breath when all six are over and evaluate what made sense, what we can do better and whether or not we can even do more.”

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Speaking at the league’s announcement of the 2014 Winter Classic on Sunday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said the league’s focus is to leave the Coyotes in the desert.

“We’re not planning on moving Phoenix as we stand here today,” he said.

The Coyotes have been run by the NHL since 2009, when former owner Jerry Moyes took the team into bankruptcy in a bid to sell to Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie, who would move the franchise to Hamilton, Ontario. The NHL vehemently opposed that plan, and a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge later refused to allow the sale to go through.

The Coyotes have had several suitors since then, but haven’t been able to complete a deal.

The latest, with former San Jose Sharks CEO Greg Jamison, fell through when his group couldn’t come through with its finances in time to meet a deadline on a 20-year, $308 million lease agreement with the City Glendale for Jobing.com Arena.

Despite reports that the league has looked at relocating the franchise, Bettman said it hasn’t looked at that option yet.

“We haven’t been exploring the alternatives,” Bettman said. “We are exploring everything we can do to work this out, and there seems to be considerable interest. If you go through the history of this, there have been lots of reasons — not excuses, but lots of reasons — this has taken a lot of time. There seems to be now, in the calm of the moment, a lot more interest than we’ve ever seen.”

Canadian businessmen George Gosbee and Anthony LeBlanc submitted a purchase bid last week, and a group led by Buffalo, N.Y. businessman Darin Pastor also put in a proposal.

Jamison is still working on a deal, and former suitor Matthew Hulsizer is reportedly interested.

Bettman said the league would select an ownership bid before talking with Glendale about a lease agreement for Jobing.com Arena. The city recently hired a company to find a manager to run the arena and handle negotiations with prospective owners.

“I’ve been in regular touch with the mayor and we agreed that when we get a framework lined up, then we would come see the city,” Bettman told reporters. “We don’t want the city to have to expend resources and time getting involved until there’s something concrete to present to them.”

If it accomplishes nothing else, the settlement between the National Hockey League and the NHL Players Association should put to rest any illusions Canadians still hold about the realities of their national game.

For years hockey has existed in two contrasting forms. One is the sentimental scenario depicted in advertisements for beer, coffee or the game itself: young tykes slipping and sliding around a convenient pond, their ankles grazing the ice as they tumble after the puck; rural teens speeding across the slough in some prairie town, racing the shadow of the sun as it sets over the barn; chilled parents huddled on benches in frigid arenas as they sip hot beverages and watch another generation learn the national passion.

That’s the way we like to imagine the game. But after 113 days of bitterness and acrimony, it must now be clear it is purely imaginary, a fiction maintained by commercial interests as a handy means of peddling products, while having little to do with the cut-throat business hockey has become.

The deal reached just before dawn on Sunday pitted a core of hard-headed U.S. team owners, fronted by an equally tough-minded lawyer from Queen’s, New York, against 700 wealthy players – most of them millionaires – who were determined to hold onto the rich contracts and attractive benefits they’ve become accustomed to. The final accord was thrashed out in Manhattan, with the help of a U.S. government mediator from the rural Midwest.

As late as 1970, 95% of NHL players originated in Canada. Today the figure hovers slightly above 50%. Only seven of the 30 teams are Canadian, and commissioner Gary Bettman fought mightily to prevent the seventh – the Winnipeg Jets – from rising from the ashes of the woeful Atlanta Thrashers. While two of the league’s most valuable teams – the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs – are Canadian, they appeared to have minimal influence in the outcome of the lockout, which was dominated by more vociferous, if less successful, American owners. Rather than while away the 113 days of the confrontation, many players simply headed home to Russia, Finland, Sweden or the Czech Republic to get in some games while NHL arenas were dark. A few younger players were able to join teams at the world junior championship in Russia, which, as if to add insult to injury, was won by the U.S. team. Canada finished out of the medals.

Change is not necessarily a bad thing, and the growth of hockey’s popularity in other countries has many positive aspects, even if it dilutes Canada’s once overwhelming dominance. Less easy to digest is the cynicism and selfishness that oozed from every aspect of the entirely unnecessary conflict between the NHL and its players. After having roundly defeated the players in an earlier lockout, the owners returned for a replay just seven years later, angry that the terms they dictated in 2004-2005 failed to produce the expected advantages, largely through their own ineptitude and managerial failings. The players knew from the beginning they had no hope of recouping the millions of dollars in lost wages, but disliked and distrusted the owners so deeply they were willing to swallow the loss rather than face another set of dictated terms. Bettman, hailed by the owners for his conquest of the union in 2004-2005, seem flummoxed this time at finding himself up against an opponent, in NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr, who could match his indifference to the interests of hockey’s fans. In the end, that may be what finally resolved the dispute, once the league realized Fehr was willing to axe another entire season, and seemed able to carry the players with him.

It’s trite to say nobody won from the conflict. Of course they didn’t – there was never any chance anyone would. From the beginning, it was certain that players would lose money, the league would lose face, sponsors would lose customers and fans would lose at least part of a season. The owners may have been alone in fooling themselves into thinking they might gain in the end, but as the previous lockout proved, their inability to control their own instincts all but ensured they would waste any commercial advantage that might come their way.

If there’s any good news in the settlement, it’s in the length of the contract. At 10 years, it all but ensures many of the key figures in the confrontation will be gone the next time around. We can only hope they will be replaced by people who have more concern for the game and its fans.

I happened to be passing the Air Canada Centre in Toronto the other day, which, of course, was dark and empty. No hockey, no crowds, no souvenir sellers, no eateries, no nothing.

There’s a tunnel from the ACC to the train station (which was crowded with holiday traffic), where TV monitors, as if out of habit, were showing an old Leaf game. An old Leaf game featuring Jonas Hoglund and Aki Berg. It was almost like someone was taunting the fans: Jonas Hoglund and Aki Berg, you sure you want this team back?

It reminded me of a really bad move I saw once, called The Betsy, about a once-great car company now being run by the idiot grandson, who has allowed himself to be manoeuvred by smarter competitors into going up against the auto union in a ruinous strike. The idiot grandson thinks he’s doing it for principle. In reality he has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

It’s not an exact analogy but it will do. Standing outside the ACC watching the ghost of Aki Berg, I wondered, what in the name of God have the Toronto Maple Leafs got to gain by letting their building stand empty like this? The answer is: nothing.

The Leafs, as everyone knows, make money as if they have a private printing press, no matter how many Aki Bergs and Jonas Hoglunds they throw at the fans. They don’t have to make the playoffs – they don’t even have to come all that close, though they usually come just close enough to assure themselves of a mediocre spot in the next year’s draft. The Leafs were making huge profits before the last lockout, and in the years since. The team itself — nevermind the real estate, the basketball franchise or the soccer team – is said to be worth $1 billion. The salary cap is just an annoyance to them: they could throw money around like the New York Yankees and still be the richest team in the league. Often they throw it around anyway, just for something to do, bringing in a series of can’t-miss players at high salaries who are going to help turn the team around, only to have them suddenly slide into inexplicable mediocrity.

It doesn’t matter what the Leafs do, they’re going to bank huge sums in any case. In hockey, they’re the 1%. So why – for what possible reason – would they let themselves get lured into locking the doors and sending away all those poor pathetic fans with their curiously inextinguishable drive to support the team through thin and thinner? All that easy money, spurned.

Tyler Anderson/National PostDaniele Finzi Pasca is the director of the COC’s Love from Afar.

There is no good reason. It’s not that the Leafs are run by an idiot grandson, though for two decades they had a close equivalent in Harold Ballard. Ballard’s been dead for 22 years. Until last year the team was owned by a vast, stinking-rich pension fund. Then it was bought by a pair of vast, stinking rich communications companies. The pension fund had zero interest in spurning money; the telecom companies have even less. They bought the team for the juicy opportunity it avails them to flog a range of products, from cellphones to cable television. They paid $1.3 billion. The return they are getting is zero.

They think – from what anyone can tell, anyway – that it’s about principle. They’re supposedly supporting the lockout for the overall good of the National Hockey League. The league is stuffed with teams that allegedly can’t survive without a better deal from the players. The claim is a bit disconcerting, given that, before the lockout, commissioner Gary Bettman liked to brag about the huge increase in revenues the league has enjoyed, as if to boast about the great job he’s done. Then he insisted a lockout was necessary because the economics weren’t working.

So the Leafs as an organization have been in hibernation to save a bunch of teams that can’t make a go of it, even during boom times for the game. It’s not because they need the competitors. There are 30 teams in the NHL, at least half a dozen of which could disappear tomorrow without being missed. It would be a much stronger, more competitive and more exciting league with fewer teams, fewer games and a slightly shorter season. They did this … why? Because Bettman, backed by a handful of hardheads among U.S. owners, insisted it’s necessary. This is the third time since he’s been commissioner that it’s been “necessary” not to play. Obviously, the first two “necessary” stoppages didn’t accomplish their goal. Odds are this one won’t either, since six months or a year without hockey isn’t going to turn Phoenix, Columbus, the New York/Brooklyn Islanders or the other marginalia into thriving franchises.

(Aaron Lynett / National Post) /Bettman: You don't like the way I run things? Who cares?

Meanwhile, the frequency of NHL lockouts is doing much to tarnish the league and keep it chasing the tail of professional baseball, football and basketball. Advertisers don’t want to tie themselves to an organization that shuts down every few years to “save” itself yet again. You don’t build a fan base for struggling franchises by sending the customers back to Nascar or caged kick-boxing every few winters. You don’t convince the world you’re running a big-time sports operation if you can’t even keep the product on the ice.

The richest teams in the NHL are Toronto, Montreal and New York, none of which needed this lockout, or any other lockout. For some unfathomable reason they allowed themselves to be bamboozled into losing money and opportunity for no good reason, because Bettman and his hardhead enablers in Boston and Philadelphia and a couple of other towns are intent on it. The best-run, most profitable and strongest franchises, in other words, allowed themselves to be kept from doing business to support a strategy that is supposed to help their competitors, but keeps failing. Why? Because they think Bettman is smarter than them? Bettman only has money because the NHL owners pay him extravagantly. He’s an employee. And not a successful one. A successful employee would have avoided another lengthy period of no revenue.

In The Betsy, the family patriarch, played by Laurence Olivier, comes out of retirement to push aside the idiot grandson and get the company building cars again. The movie was based on a steamy novel by Harold Robbins. Maybe someone will write a similar book about the reasons the Leafs would take their cue from Gary Bettman and the hardheads. Except I doubt anyone could produce a plausible explanation..

Ken Lewenza and Donald Fehr, two guys with union issues on their minds, have joined keyboards to author a piece on the evils of management, noting that hard-headed bosses are all the same, whether they own a billion-dollar hockey team or a Caterpillar plant in southwest Ontario.

It must have seemed like a great idea. Appeal to all those beer-drinking factory guys who are the backbone of hockey, and get it printed in the Toronto Star, where left-wing readers would slap their foreheads and declare, “Gee, I never thought of it like that.” Then maybe one of the Star’s “progressive” columnists could get involved and write a tirade about Gary Bettman, and what a beast he is.

And it would have been a good idea, if not for the fact it’s totally ridiculous. In fact, one of the few nasty things you could say about Gary Bettman, without me agreeing wholeheartedly, is that his situation is a lot like that of a factory boss trying to put the squeeze on his downtrodden assembly-line workers.

The problems start in the first paragraph:

“You might think that a typical Canadian worker (who makes, on average, about $22 an hour) would have little in common with a professional hockey player whose annual income is measured in six or seven figures — other than that they both love Canada’s national sport.”

You’re right on that: I do think there’s little in common. Right off the top, factory workers make $22 an hour; the average salary in the NHL is $2.45 million. If a facto ry worker gets laid off, he or she is going to have a very hard time making ends meet. If an NHL player sits out a year, that means he has to make his $2.45 million stretch over two years, which works out to $1.24 million a year. Not really that tough, ya know? Hockey players, as Fehr points out, have short careers. But even four or five years at $2.45 million is easily enough to coast through life on, if you’re not foolish enough to blow it all.

FotoliaSeniors living in long-term care facilities in Ontario were prescribed antibiotics for longer than seven days nearly half the time, a new study shows, a more out of physician habit than need.

So right off the bat, the two union bosses are losing the argument. Their next claim is that ruthless owners – whether in the NHL or otherwise — are deploying “an increasingly common, aggressive management strategy: locking out workers when they won’t accept management demands for deep concessions.”

“It used to be that unions were the more likely party to precipitate a work stoppage, in their quest to lift wages and labour standards over time. Nowadays, in contrast, it is employers who feel they hold the upper hand. They are willing to shut down operations altogether, imposing substantial economic losses on their workers, on their own firms, and on the broader economy, until they get what they want. And they want a lot: historic concessions in wages, benefit packages, and security for the working people who ultimately produce the wealth.”

Spot the hole in this argument? According to the authors, when unions stage a work stoppage, it’s “in their quest to lift wages and labour standards over time.” When owners do it, it’s “to get what they want.” Employer lockouts are an imposition on the economy, on workers and on the firms themselves. Worker walkouts are to better the lot of the working stiff, even if it means forsaking weeks or months of income and risking the death of the company itself, as 18,500 striking employees at Hostess recently learned.

Despite what he may believe, the average Canadian hockey fan is not necessarily an hourly paid Joe who drags his lunch bucket to the factory every day at dawn for an eight-hour shift

So what we have here is a very clear double standard. Workers who use their leverage to get what they want are good; an employer trying to run a company so everyone gets paid and the company turns a profit is all about greed.

It’s not a great argument to be making, especially for Fehr. Despite what he may believe, the average Canadian hockey fan is not necessarily an hourly paid Joe who drags his lunch bucket to the factory every day at dawn for an eight-hour shift. Some even have an education, and can recognize the difference between their life and that of a hockey star.

As Fehr points out, the NHL “has enjoyed seven straight years of record revenues (ever since the last lockout back in 2004-05). Last year revenues reached $3.3 billion, an all-time high. The industry is profitable, and the franchises worth more than ever (the value of Toronto’s franchise alone is now estimated at more than $1 billion).”

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True. And guess what? The players have been making a killing as a result. The reason the owners forced the latest lockout is because the contract they imposed on the players after the last one turned out to be so abysmally flawed that player salaries continued going through the roof. The average salary has almost doubled since the players “lost” that lockout. Player agents found so many loopholes in the deal that managers were screaming for relief, when they weren’t competing (just before the lockout was called) to sign their stars to long-range deals at even higher salaries.

No one – not me, anyway — is going to argue that the owners are a bunch of nice guys. Individually there are undoubtedly some decent individuals among them, but as a group they have the instincts of a horde of Huns. They’re not even very smart: They all but demolished the players in the last round of bargaining seven years ago, forcing them to accept a new deal that ended up making the players richer than ever. And who do they have negotiating their latest deal? Gary Bettman, the same genius who led them victoriously into the last one, and who is one of the few people on earth who could make me feel sympathy for unions.

One of the few nasty things you could say about Gary Bettman, without me agreeing wholeheartedly, is that his situation is a lot like that of a factory boss trying to put the squeeze on his downtrodden assembly-line workers

NHL players have good reason to stand up to the owners, if only because of the league’s terrible record when it comes to financial decisions. Bettman’s the guy who turned down a $212 million offer for the Phoenix Coyotes, so the league could run them at a substantial loss for two years before unloading them for much less to a different buyer. He’s the guy who insisted the Atlanta Thrashers had to stay in Atlanta, losing money, for as long as possible, rather than move to Winnipeg and sell out every seat for years ahead. This is not a guy you want to entrust with your last five bucks.

But to equate an NHLer to a factory stiff is too much to expect, perhaps even of “progressives” who read the Star.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/11/kelly-mcparland-donald-fehr-drops-the-ball-in-equating-nhl-millionaires-to-lunch-bucket-factory-stiffs/feed/0stdDonald Fehr, executive director of the NHL Players' Association, speaks to the media following talks after meeting with the NHL, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, in New York.Brent Lewin for National Post files